this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2024
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Lenovo’s concept laptop is real, transparent, and ready to impress::Lenovo’s ThinkBook Transparent Display Laptop is a 17.3-inch notebook with a transparent screen and a built-in tablet for you to doodle on.

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[–] [email protected] 85 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Great! Now you and your best buddy dont have to sit next to eachother when watching porn and you can instead sit across from each other and make eye contact

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago

"I love masturbating to porn with my bro"

[–] [email protected] 58 points 8 months ago (2 children)

More like ready to show everyone what you’re looking at. I’m sure businesses will love having their confidential documents broadcast to the entire coffee shop.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 8 months ago

Not to mention it’ll work terribly in most light conditions.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago (1 children)

In the article Lenovo says that if/when they go to production it will absolutely have the ability to enable/disable the transparency

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago

But then what's even the point?

"We need to find a way to block the transparency on our transparent displays!"

"...You mean like a regular screen?"

[–] [email protected] 49 points 8 months ago (7 children)

Uhm, cool I guess. Why should we use this? Does it have any advantage over classical displays?

[–] [email protected] 30 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Some very novel jobs where you need to be at a computer but also like to see the person in front of you? For the sake of transparency so the client can follow a bit?

I am just guessing. Transparent screens as tech are very promising for AR, imagine a technicians tablet with this? But a laptop… more a novelty.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

One person would be looking at a reversed image though, so that's not going to fly.

Why not simply have a double sided monitor?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

Even if it does, it has a ton of disadvantages too.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

Yes. The advantage is it's really cool.

You can get done damn near everything you need with super basic products, but is that how you roll?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Put a paper drawing behind the transparent screen and draw on the screen to digitize it.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

So you can proudly watch porn in public and make not just people behind you uncomfortable, but also people in front of you!

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 8 months ago (2 children)

They were so busy asking if they could that they never bothered to ask if they should.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

Exactly. There's a market for that tech. Laptop ain't it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Sometimes you just gotta build a thing.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 8 months ago (2 children)

A lot of people are complaining about it's use case for laptops, but I think a display like this on cars or glasses/goggles could be interesting.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Doesn't this already exist since half a century? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-up_display No need for a transparent display at all.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago (2 children)

HUDs on cars rely on a screen on the dash that reflects onto the windshield and into your eyeballs. They're good at night, but during the day they can be pretty hard to see unless the screen is absurdly bright. Maybe this wouldn't have that issue?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago (1 children)

As an additional data point, I've never once had trouble seeing the HUD on my Mazda even while driving into the sun.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

AR Tablets for technicians

[–] [email protected] 31 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Immediately lost me at non-tactile keyboard. Who wants this.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 8 months ago (4 children)

I am happy that the common consensus in this topic is "why?"

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago

I kinda like the idea of the laptop industry coming up with a bunch of wild concepts where only one out of ten is ever useful. The car industry does this all the time.

If you go to car shows, you'll see all sorts of cars with a full glass passenger area. They'll never happen, one reason being that you can't fit an air con unit strong enough to keep the passengers from cooking on a sunny day, but they're neat to look at.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It's definitely a concept, but I can't for the life of me envision the use case.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago

I can envision plenty of use cases, none of which are laptops.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago (5 children)

Lenovo failed to impress me with their laptops. Brand isnt worth dick anymore

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

Their tablets also fail to impress.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

I always loved looking at transparent screens in movies and shows. Everything on the screen is bright and colorful, and the camera is able to pan to a view where the background provides a flat color so everything is legible!

Can't see these working theat well in the real world. How would it do a dark mode? What about bright sunlight and a busy background? The example images already look like the background is going to be extremely distracting, and those are the ones they chose to show it off.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

Ironically the first thought I had looking at this was "this would make a really great prop for some scifi movie". My second thought was "this looks horrendous to actually use as a laptop". Non-physical buttons suck as car manufacturers recently discovered, and aside from looking cool there's virtually no positives to a transparent laptop screen and a whole raft of negatives.

So yeah, very cool concept, utterly crap product.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

And in regards of text and graphs: everything is mirrored from behind. I am not sure what transparent screens may be used for.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

That's kind of a cool secondary use though.

A one button screen flip to present to someone on the other side would be marginally useful.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

So what's the benefit of it being transparent?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (3 children)

It functions more like a drawing tablet, with the ability to put something behind the screen allowing you to easily trace it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

so nothing most users would use. It sounds more practical for kids.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

5 year old me would love it

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)

This would be cool expanded to fit window panes in your home. I know I've enjoyed putting on the youtube Yule-tide fireplace on my TV to make the home more cozy in the winter, it'd be even cooler to turn "winter" mode on in your windows, really complete the hygge feeling

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago

Just stick with the fire for all the windows too. This is fine.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago

This isn't what we meant when we said bring back transparent electronics.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago

Disgusting. Other than shock value there's absolutely no benefit to any of the design factors. Keyboard is not tactile and it will probably tire your hands fast. Screen is annoying to use and can only be used indoors. It's as if they took worst experiences and then amplified them. What's that, you hate typing on your screen keyboard, how about we make keyboard also touch based and we move it away from screen, now you have to look at keys while typing. Ooh, you hate glares, how about you see glares from front and behind the screen.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago
[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I am so not interested in transparent screen for consumer use. At least not in this shape.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

Circular laptops, I think you're onto something here.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

I feel like most of the most of the people here didn’t read the article or watch the video. If you’re asking “why would anyone need this”, the article touches on it:

One of Lenovo’s big ideas is that the form factor could be useful for digital artists, helping them to see the world behind the laptop’s screen while sketching it on the lower half of the laptop where the keyboard is[…]

Also, it’s a prototype, yet people are responding as if this is a product that Lenovo is launching. Even if transparent screens do become a popular but useless fad, that wouldn’t nullify the value of this prototype. Trying shit is fun, especially if it’s something we’ve been imagining in sci-fi for years!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

Aaargh it looks so cool and futuristic but I know it's impractical as hell

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

This is something I'd really want, but I couldn't justify spending money on it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

This is the best summary I could come up with:


A year after flexing its R&D muscles with a rollable laptop that expanded its screen with a simple button push, Lenovo is back at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, with another somehow even more sci-fi concept device.

“I am not a good artist,” Lenovo’s executive director of ThinkPad portfolio and product, Tom Butler, admits to me in an interview, “but I can bring something behind and I can trace it.” In the room we’re sitting in, that means pulling a bunch of sunflowers behind the laptop screen, but Butler pitches the idea of an architect being able to sit on location and sketch a building without taking their eyes off the environment in front of them.

Although the 17.3-inch display in this concept is only 720p, AG Zheng, Lenovo’s executive director of SMB product and solutions, tells me that going with an OLED would have limited the company to a resolution as low as 480p.

When images of this device first started leaking, I assumed this was meant as just another sci-fi flourish, but it’s actually part of Lenovo’s pitch for artists.

But Butler says he has “very high confidence” that its technologies will make it into a real laptop in the next five years and hopes that revealing this proof of concept will start a public conversation about what it could be useful for, setting a target for Lenovo to work toward.

Halfway through my interview, I pulled my (decidedly nontransparent) MacBook’s screen forward to double-check my phone behind it, and Butler leaped on it immediately.


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